I went out for a walk today. The air was still, heavy with that strange quiet that sits between reflection and loneliness. I thought of him—the person who adds activity to my life but not depth. We run together, try new restaurants, and share banter that fills the silence. He pushes me out of my physical comfort zone, but not my emotional one.
It’s not bad. It’s just thin. Two months in, I already sense the absence of emotional gravity, the tenderness that steadies you. I could do all these things alone, but what I can’t recreate is the illusion of togetherness, the comfort of proximity that mimics connection.
A friend told me recently that maybe I stay longer because these relationships keep me where I am—slightly unsteady, slightly unsure. “He keeps you in your loop,” she said, where sometimes, I do not intend to move ahead myself. Maybe she’s right. Freud might have called it repetition compulsion, the mind’s way of circling back to old wounds, hoping this time, they’ll heal differently. The chaos feels like home because it once was.
He deflects; I analyze. Both of us circling the same thing—intimacy. My defenses are subtle: I think instead of feel, explain instead of express. Our defenses protect us from psychic pain, creating what Winnicott would call the false self—the adaptive, composed version of me that fits into love while keeping the real one hidden.
Sometimes I imagine leaving. I’ve rehearsed it in my head a hundred times. I picture the silence that will follow, the ache and mostly relief braided together. Yet I stay another day, maybe two. Because what if absence feels worse than this emptiness? The ache of the familiar feels safer than peace.
